Josh Silverman, the chief executive of Skype, the popular internet telephone
service, is “seriously considering” launching third party advertising on the
service, The Telegraph can reveal.

Silverman, who says the company’s mission statement is to be “the fabric of real-time communication on the web”, has revealed that his team are looking into the possibility as an additional revenue stream.

“It’s challenging to get right as the way people use is Skype is very personal but we think our users expect us to do it so we can continue to support free. But it will be done in a tasteful way,” he explained.

Currently there are no third party adverts on the service. The service, six months on from the creation of its new board – which saw eBay sell 56pc of the company to Silverlake, an investor group, while retaining a 30 per cent stake – and the rest returning to the founders, serial web entrepreneurs by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (as part of acomplicated legal dispute settlement), is ramping up its premium offerings to generate additional revenue streams.

Last week Skype announced the roll-out of a raft of new monthly subscription services offering its cheapest calls yet across more than 170 countries. Its biggest revenues come from people using their Skype account to make audio-only calls to landlines or mobiles anywhere in the world on a ‘pay as you go’ basis. The new deals cut the minute rate by as much as 60 per cent down on Skype’s pay as you go rate in a bid to up its subscriber base, escalating its rivalry with the major telecommunication companies.

This week Skype is also launching five-way video group calling in beta. For the first three months it will be free while the company monitors its progress and user feedback – but then it will become a service people have to pay a monthly fee for.